


VIII

by atlantisairlock



Category: Now You See Me (2013)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Not Canon Compliant, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Past Child Abuse, Swearing, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 09:23:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhodes, Dray, Tressler, Bradley, Atlas, Reeves, McKinney and Wilder... and their stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. rhodes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Agent.

_dylan_

_\---_

In an abandoned foxhole back in the garden of a house that lies empty is a zipped knapsack containing a decomposing passport, identification card, a weatherbeaten watch, a Thaddeus Bradley DVD and the remains of a copy of a newspaper article from forever and a day ago. 

A closer look at the contents of the knapsack would reveal that the passport belongs to a boy named Leonard Shrike, a young, innocent face framed on one page. It’s stamped with many immigration visas from countries all around the world, colourful, telling stories through dates and places. The Thaddeus Bradley DVD details the not the whodunit but the _howdunit_ behind one of famous magician Lionel Shrike’s star acts, and the newspaper article is a two-pager about the death of the same magician. 

Dylan Rhodes remembers all too clearly the day he shoved those belongings into the backpack and put it down the foxhole. Still young and bitter - but smart. Undeniably intelligent - a twenty-year-old having spent countless nights researching, going through his late father’s library and making elaborate plans and blueprints. He’d have to wait years and years for everything to come to fruition, but he could wait. Sacrifices would have to be made, of course, and one of those was giving up his identity. Exit Leonard Shrike, enter Dylan Rhodes. Exit high school student… enter FBI agent in planning. 

Years and years. It’ll be worth it, he promises himself, to avenge his father, who needlessly drowned because of a cheap safe, because of Thaddeus Bradley. To avenge his mother, who slaved to support her son and send him to school on one income after Tressler Insurance denied her the payout. The doctors told him she died of a heart attack. Leon/Dylan knows better- she died of a broken heart. To avenge himself, for the loss of both parents for the sake of one man’s rising career.

It’s heartbreaking to give up the watch, to leave it behind, to leave the memory of his father behind. But Dylan knows he has to, because that watch is Leonard’s. And today, it’s goodbye to Leonard forever. Leon is dead, gone, buried. It's the end of the road, for him, and the beginning, for Dylan Rhodes. 

He buries his identity along with his possessions, turns his back and leaves, never to return again.

It’s a slow climb up the ranks of the FBI. It’s investigations of cases he cares nothing about. It’s living in solitude, putting up a snide front towards his colleagues. It’s meaningless interrogations of people who are nothing in his eyes. It's not  _caring._

It’s a slow climb up the ranks of the Eye, too - but it’s worth it, he reminds himself. Dylan never allows himself to become disillusioned, and it’s easy to be patient when he knows that success is only a matter of time. It’s easy to keep going, when he pores through endless paperwork at night on his desk and sees the framed photo of a boy, a man, a woman, sitting at the corner. The one thing that is Leon’s, not Dylan’s, and reminds him why he’s doing everything he’s doing and why he will do everything he needs to do.

The plan really puts itself into action after Dylan dons his trusty blue hoodie and searches for magicians to pad the ranks of the Eye.

He watches Daniel throw his deck in the air in a flashy gesture and eyes the appreciative crowd gasping at the building lighting up, the lights forming a seven of diamonds. He turns away from the droves of adoring fans coming his way and places the tarot card in his room. He watches Merritt from a seat in the cafe, hiding a smile behind a cup of coffee as the man helplessly gives away crisp green dollar bills. A swift brush past Merritt’s equipment and he leaves the Hermit on the board. He watches Jack slyly take the man’s wallet and watch and run down the steps of the boat, and deftly slides Death into his stolen property. He watches Henley terrify the audience with the bucket of piranhas and stage blood, yelling about sadists after she reappears in their midst, and when nobody is looking, lets her card fall into the water.

Then he waits.

He watches from a distance, like a guardian angel, guides them on their way with a little push here and a little nudge there. Dylan plays his part when the time comes, snapping about magicians and acting like the fool when he needs to.

He thought he planned everything. He didn’t plan for Alma.

The surprise when he meets her is genuine - one of the only genuine parts in the whole magic show. The only thing he’s worried about is her maybe fucking it all up, and he won’t _let her_ \- not when he’s been planning this for so long, the revenge of a little boy who never saw his father resurface from the depths of the sapphire blue water.

And… she doesn’t. If Thaddeus and Arthur are the audience - the victims, in a sense - then Alma ends up as the misdirection. A good misdirection. She’s supposed to be another pawn… so it confuses him when he sees the real hurt and rage in her eyes when he accuses her, in his way, of being the mastermind, the fifth Horseman. It bothers him. 

He knows he felt _something_ in the plane, in New Orleans when they talked about the Eye.

It takes Five Pointz for him to realize that he loves her.

The kiss is electric and suddenly it’s _all_ worth it. His journey didn’t just lead to four new magicians in the Eye, with their night on the carousel. His journey didn’t just lead to Thaddeus Bradley and Arthur Tressler behind bars, to revenge. His journey led to her.

It is all so worth it. That day on the bridge when she throws the key into the water. It doesn’t resurface either, but that's okay.

He kisses her again. They have brunch at a quaint little café at the riverside where they buy crepes and baguettes and café au lait. They watch horror movies on his couch and criticize the crappy acting. They talk about magic and the Eye.

Leonard/Dylan hopes he's made his parents proud, avenged them. He's happier, more lighthearted, and it feels good when another two photos finally make their way to join his family portrait on his desk - one of him and Alma, one of him with his four Horsemen. 

All is well. All is well and will always be well now. 

It's over. And in a good way.


	2. dray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Rookie.

_alma_

_\---_

Dylan doesn’t know it, but Alma knows, in a way, how it feels for your father to leave and never come back… and to want to wreak revenge on the person who drove someone who means more than life itself to death.

Julien Dray is the poster boy for men forced into unhappy marriages because of pregnant girlfriends (and one night stands) and trying to get out of them. He falls in love and without a second thought abandons his wife and daughters and runs away to god-knows-where, leaving a stunned Adele Dray to raise Alma and Juliet on her own.

Alma’s primary concern is making sure her sensitive mother doesn’t begin to self-destruct because the last thing they need is her forcing twenty sleeping pills down her throat and leaving the twins in a foster home. Juliet’s primary concern, it turns out, is vastly different - it’s blaming her mother every chance she gets for the loss of the man she idolized, the man she saw as a god, the man who her sister couldn’t help but see as a father and husband who never really was.

Her worries end up to be for naught, because Adele meets a beautiful woman while picking Alma up from school, falls in love, switches back to using the surname _Guillory_ instead of _Dray_ and it isn’t long before she’s smiling genuine smiles again, the smiles Alma’s seen on the face of a young girl in the photo albums her mother carefully placed in boxes in the cellar. Renee comes over night after night and they watch cheesy flicks on the television with Alma sitting between them on the sofa eating all the popcorn. Juliet stays in her room with headphones on and makes it a point to never speak to Renee - and if she does it's with a cutting, sarcastic tone. 

Adele is torn, because her daughters are her first priority and Juliet shows no signs of warming up to the woman she loves and it takes her younger daughter to firmly dissuade her from giving up her happiness because Juliet's being a dumbass. 

Renee Beaumont and Adele Guillory have a very quiet, informal ceremony in a world that still firmly rejects same-sex love. Alma helps to plan things and gets to know her mother’s future wife even better than during the movie dates - talks to Renee, laughs with her, and sees her as a mother, too.

Juliet commits the ultimate betrayal, skips the little wedding and goes out to the movies, and even though Alma sees them hide it well she can tell the two women are heartbroken. And it kills her too. 

Alma doesn’t understand her sister, doesn't understand why she'd put a damper on their mothers' big day, and when Juliet gets home that night they have the biggest row they’ve ever had. She screams at her older sister and demands to know exactly why she’s trying to ruin their mother’s life all over again, just when they could find happiness, just when they could have a family once more. Her sister screams back, asking her why she chooses the  _other woman_ over their  _father,_ and what Alma just can't grasp is why she even sees Julien as a father - the only thing she'll ever appreciate about Julien is that he taught her about _magic._ Her next biggest passion, right after protecting people. She loves magic, as much as she loves her sister... and then - 

They barely speak to each other after that, two sisters who used to have each others’ backs all the time. Juliet spends longer out on the streets, leaving the house early and coming back late. Alma pretends she doesn’t see the hateful glances her sister throws at Adele and Renee, pretends she doesn’t smell the heady alcohol that her sister’s breath reeks of, pretends that her sister isn’t out fucking men whose names she doesn’t catch and whose faces she doesn’t remember the morning after, because _fuck,_ she still loves her only sibling even if she’s acting like a complete, utter dumbass. _La foi peut déplacer des montagnes._ She still has faith, faith that her sister has  _sense._ That she'll come around. 

Alma becomes a cop. She starts out in the neighbourhood, a rookie like any other, makes her mothers proud like she’s always done. Nobody suggests she writes to Julien, which she’s thankful for - he’s never taken an interest in their lives after he ran off, so why write to him about this? It’s not his achievement, he’s not her father. She doesn’t have one, all things considered. 

There’s a big day where they do a raid in the clubs, the seedy areas, the red-light district. Her heart pounds because it’s her first time and it’s exhilarating, and she feels like she was born to do this. Born to send the bad guys to where they belong.

If only things were so clear-cut.

At twelve-thirty in the morning they burst into one of the many sleazy clubs in the precinct, suspected to be an underground brothel, and Alma comes face to face with her older sister dealing cocaine to a bunch of fresh-faced kids who _sure_ don’t look old enough to be in a club.

Juliet screams profanities at her sister when Alma snaps cold steel handcuffs over her wrists, screams betrayal, screams bloody murder, and Alma can’t help but feel the cold sinking feeling in her stomach when she goes to bed that night after telling her parents the news about Juliet.

Her sister shoves a sock down her throat and suffocates herself in jail, and at the funeral, all Alma wants to do is die. It’s her fault. It’s her fault, it’s always going to be, and she spends years - _years_ \- just killing herself from the inside. It’s her revenge on herself. There are cuts on her arms, her legs,  _murderer_ is carved on the inside of her left thigh. Adele tells her it's not her fault, Renee tells her not to blame herself, and she does. 

Time does not heal. It just pushes it all to the back of her mind and she tries to  _forget,_ to make it hurt less. 

( It doesn't. )

Interpol. The desk. And then her first time off it. Dylan is a pretentious, arrogant dickwad with a cactus up his ass, but she’s too focused on capturing the Horsemen to really give a shit just then.

She doesn’t expect to fall in love with him.

She doesn’t expect to _get_ how he feels once she learns who he is, who he _was,_ and why he became who he masquerades as today.

Alma visits the Lionel Shrike tree with him, and he’s by her side when she visits Juliet’s grave for the first time in a long time. He squeezes her hand and it says everything - _I understand, I’m sorry, I love you._

And she squeezes back, because maybe with someone else who  _understands_ they can heal and learn to accept some things. 

It's a start.


	3. tressler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Money.

_arthur_

_\---_

Tressler Insurance. Begun in 1900 by an ambitious young man and his even more ambitious wife, who begin a business that grows and grows and shows no signs of stopping. 

Their only son runs the company with the shrewd-mindedness of his mother and the same cautiousness as his father, and he teaches his eldest the same things his parents taught him. The company changes hands as the generations go on, from father and mother to son and daughter, and stays solid, stays stable.

( Of course, nobody and nothing gets that big without making a few enemies, without doing a few deals that are under the table. But nobody has to know. ) 

The very day Arthur is born he is already being groomed to lead the company. Once he is old enough, the boy sits in on company meetings, watching in silence, observing and absorbing. He learns how to balance checkbooks before he learns algebra. He learns the rules of economics before the rules of language. Zavier Tressler's keener on teaching his son how to loophole than his table manners. Home is a battlefield which his parents watch over, making their children ruthless and sharp-witted by pitting them against each other. They snooze, they lose. Life at home is a constant fight between four children - over dinner, the remote, the cat. It's not about age, they learn, it's about who's got brains, got guts, and knows how to use them.

Art might be a ‘prissy little tot’, but being prim and proper doesn’t mean he can’t outfight, outwit and outsmart his three younger siblings. Alexis, Andrew and Aurora don’t stand a chance, not from the very beginning, and they know it.

They’re all trained to take over the company - but that doesn't mean they always want to. Aurora runs off with her girlfriend after spitting at her parents’ feet, telling them she never wanted to be their pawn, that she wants her life back under her own control. Andrew throws himself off a building because he's the kind of kid that isn't meant to sit on a throne. When their parents pass away, Arthur talks his remaining sister after the funeral, and with a deceptively calm tone, tells her he’ll kill her if she tries to muscle in on his territory. She smirks and tells him he doesn't have the cojones to do what he says he'll do.

He makes good on it. He throws the gun in the sea, goes a long way into the forest and buries her six feet under a random tree in the middle of the night. And then the monopoly is his, no questions asked. 

Arthur settles into leading the company as if he were born to do it - which, of course, he is. He’s determined to be more than a name on the list of leaders engraved on the plaque in the grand lobby of Tressler Insurance. He wants to make the company bigger than it already is. He wants to be remembered. He makes radical changes. He fires people, hires new minds. He scraps countless future plans and creates new ones from scratch. He amasses a great wealth, even greater than before, without a thought for anything - or anyone - else.

He brings the Horsemen on board. 

Art actually likes the kids. Daniel, amusingly absurd, arrogant, but Arthur himself always has been and he understands the snark and pride - understands that sometimes that's crucial to get you on top. Merritt’s cunning is something he respects, a little, because after all that same cunning got him where he is now. Henley is all-woman, knows exactly what she’s doing and how she wants to do it, and Arthur likes her more than he liked either of his sisters. Jack is young and full of potential, and Arthur is ready to back that potential as long as the four of them are bringing money into the company. He’s willing to give away millions to that sonofabitch Thaddeus Bradley if it means the Horsemen’s reputations won’t be tarnished and his money tree isn't going to die. 

His opinion of them changes drastically the day they humiliate him on a New Orleans stage and leave him with a pithy four million dollars in his bank account. He goes from paying Thaddeus to fuck off to paying him to fuck the Horsemen over.

An hour after he tells the man to shred the Horsemen, the police turn up at his door with evidence from a crime he committed as a young man and an arrest warrant for the murder of Alexis Tressler.

It’s a funny ending, he has to laugh as he’s sitting in a police car and driven away, wrists chafing in metal cuffs. After all that, it ends with him being taken away for a murder he committed in a time of his life he barely remembers. Arthur Tressler, one of the richest men in the world, destined to face the death penalty.

He’d never thought conning people out of their money would ever catch up to him, least of all shooting his little sister through the head in her sleep and burying her where he thought no one would ever find her.

Justice does exist. It's a funny world.

He wonders how the Horsemen will do.


	4. bradley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Debunker.

_thaddeus_

_\---_

From the moment his aunt gives him a miniature magic set for Christmas, Thaddeus knows he wants to be a magician. He hides a flashlight under his sheets, and unlike other kids who read action comics after lights-out, he does card tricks and changes paper into money and puts two cut ropes back together under the dim light of a torch, under the safety of soft down sheets.

He’s insistent he wants to be a magician when he grows up.

His father is equally insistent that he won’t be.

His mother was a artist, looked for darkness in every corner of her world and made sculptures to represent that darkness. A suicidal woman who blew her brains out when Thaddeus was four, and left her husband, a math teacher of ten years, with a child he simultaneously didn’t want and demanded excellence out of. Theodore Bradley goes from appreciating art as much as his wife does, to seeing art as the scourge which took her from him too soon - sees any art form, any artistic career, as a betrayal, as a threat.

Magic is an art. Magic is a threat. He confiscates the magic set, the books on magic, everything. Thaddeus has to watch, helpless, as pages upon pages of knowledge he sees as sacred are thrown into the fireplace, where orange flames lick at the corners of black letters upon white paper, and decimate each book until it’s nothing but ash.

It’s the day he learns the meaning of hatred and revenge.

Thaddeus is drilled on science and math from a young age, forced to pore over textbooks more advanced than his school grade level. He learns to hate math, biology, chemistry and physics with a passion - almost as much as he hates his father. He takes his own revenge by hiding magic catalogues in between the pages of his homework and browsing through them, purchasing equipment on the sly and practicing tricks behind the bike shed in school. He hides his props up the tree in the backyard in plastic baggies when he gets home. Other kids buy comic books and drugs; he buys basic magic tricks. It is his solace. 

Theodore dies from a brain aneurysm when his son turns seventeen.

Thaddeus attends the funeral. He irons his suit and goes through the motions of crying relatives and listens to countless apologies for his loss. He nods politely at each one and says something soothing, because it’s them who needs the relief, not him.

At the end of the proceedings he goes home, throws the suit into the dumpster and scrambles up his tree, much taller than years before when he first started hiding ropes and cards and other paraphernalia in its nooks and crannies. He digs out everything, rifles the safe for money, entrusts the house to his aunt, and leaves.

Thaddeus starts out like any other street magician. Stands on sidewalks with a cardboard sign and a little hat on the ground, raises his voice to draw people in. He spends his days shuffling decks and folding handkerchiefs and hiding various objects up his sleeve. His tricks have just enough uniqueness and he’s got just enough charm, enough flair, to get his fair share of applause every day - and more importantly, by evening he’s always got enough in that little hat to get a cheap place in some dingy little motel to crash for the night, to grab some breakfast the next morning, and repeat the cycle all over again.

It’s all for the Eye, of course. All he wants - _needs_ \- is to get into the secret circle that all magicians worth their salt know about. It’s all he needs, all he’ll ever need, to validate himself. To validate everything he’s struggled to become. He _deserves_ it. He spends sleepless nights drawing out elaborate plans to improve his little feats, to make himself stand out. Thaddeus goes out there all bluster and bravado, and when he makes a bit of a name for himself within the magic circle, at least, he’s confident word will soon come for him.

A month passes, two. They add up, turn into a year, two, five. And one day Thaddeus Bradley wakes up in a decent hotel bed to a decent view and the cold, piercing understanding that he is not going to become part of the Eye. That he never will.

He thinks of his father, of the burned magic books, of his first magic set thrown into the garbage like it was worthless, of his father telling him in no unclear terms that his dreams could rot in Hell. He thinks of the way he’s living, still stuck on the streets after five years, jumping from one place to another, relying on people’s goodwill and the occasional handout. He thinks of how, in another place, in another time, he might be at a phone box calling his father out of duty and hearing the sarcasm drip from his voice as he listens to his son’s failure and deals out criticism, criticism that has never stopped leaving his lips, asking if the prodigal son finally wants to come home.

The next day he packs up his magic equipment and starts dissecting the star acts of statewide heartthrob-slash-famed escape artist Corinthian Jacobs. Studies them, watches them with an enamoured audience, thinks one step ahead of everyone, discovers how the man does his tricks. He explains them all in layman terms and uploads the video of himself speaking on YouTube.

Within hours the video is viral and Jacobs is watching his career spiral down into wreckage as everyone now knows how he does what he does. Overnight there’s nobody to impress anymore. His career is in ruins - and Thaddeus’ is only beginning. Overnight he’s a _real_ success, and he goes from zero to hero. Controversial antihero indeed, but that doesn’t faze him, not when the fans come in droves. It’s money, success, fame, pure and simple. It’s what he’s always wanted, in a form he never expected.

Statewide, nationwide, worldwide. His name is on everyone’s lips. A magician turned traitor to the cause, exposing the secrets behind the illusions of another magician. Jacobs goes down. Swanepoel goes down, swearing she'll take revenge on him if it's the last thing she ever does. Lee, Wainwright,  _Shrike._

His biggest success, in his opinion, has to be Lionel Shrike.

The man is good, Thaddeus admits when he's studying his feats. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t fall (they _all_ should).

When Shrike sinks into the ocean in the safe and never resurfaces, Thaddeus scans the newspaper article with one arched eyebrow. He can’t believe he’d go that far to make his name again, to get back into the limelight.  

He attends the funeral, just like before. 

The stare of Shrike’s son bores through him, and it makes Thaddeus just the slightest bit uncomfortable. It feels like the boy can see right into his soul, and sees him as responsible for the death of his father.

He turns around and leaves, feet moving as fast as he can, taking him further away from a coffin, from tears and black clothing. A memory from a time and a life long before, one that he doesn’t want being dredged up once again.

Life goes on. He’s determined to crack the Horsemen and bring them down. It's more than what Tressler can give him in terms of money; it's the simple, primal gratification of bringing someone down where he wasn't able to rise up to. Jealousy - it all goes back to jealousy even though Thaddeus pushes that away. Because at the end of the day the only thing he is, is jealous and angry. He expects it to go without a hitch the way it always has.

What he doesn’t expect is to be thwarted by an FBI agent, framed, and realize that he’s going to be sitting in jail for the rest of his life. 

Thaddeus sits in his cell, sinks down in defeat after Dylan Rhodes leaves.

It isn’t long before he remembers the _eyes,_ the unmistakeable eyes, eyes that ate him raw from the inside ten, twenty years ago.

And finally he understands. He knows he's never getting out of here, not if Dylan Rhodes - Shrike's _son_ \- can help it. 


	5. atlas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Showman.

_daniel_

_\---_

The little boy with the downy-soft curls and too-bright eyes is the runt of the litter. 

Aiden’s the witty math/science genius of the family, a whiz with numbers and the like. Reese oozes artistic talent and is well on his way to a music scholarship. Elspeth lives and breathes sports, Ellesmere’s beautiful and charming and aces every single class. And Daniel… Daniel likes magic.

At family dinners everyone remembers Aiden for his sharp tongue, Reese for the compositions he plays on his violin, Elspeth for the enthusiastic retelling of her latest accomplishment on the field, Ellesmere for her winning smile and top grades. Everyone remembers Danny - if they remember him at all - for hiding in the corner and shuffling his trusty deck of cards.

Some relatives murmur behind the Atlases' backs. Murmur that Danny's the black sheep, the proverbial  _one_ who's going to bring the name down or get lost in the shadows of his siblings. 

Danny hears them.

They all tease - or maybe taunt - their little brother, as playground politics demands. Too dreamy and lost in his own world that’s dominated by illusions and sleight of hand, Aiden criticizes when he finds time to raise his head from an endless slew of videos and papers on the newest scientific discoveries. Too distracted to ever complete something and stick with it to the end - Reese makes a joke out of it, writes a short piece of music dedicated to Danny, full of strategically erratic staccato beats, messy rhythm and imperfect perfectionism. _Control freak_ , Elspeth rolls her eyes whenever she passes her brother’s room on her way out to practice. Plain _dumb_ is all Ellesmere can think of saying when their parents sigh and shake their heads over their youngest son’s consistently terrible grades and even more appalling comments that all run about the same way. 

 _We did so well with the other four_ , Danny hears them say outside his door after they put him to bed at night, an expert at hearing what he shouldn't. _What happened?_

His eyes darken and he shuffles his cards a little faster, a little angrier. 

He’s not a failure. He’ll show them. 

Danny makes his own tricks, his own scaled-down show. Brand-new spins on age-old tricks like the proverbial rabbit in the hat and linking rings and colourful scarves make him relatively popular in school. He’s good-looking enough and his tricks are cool enough that people look past the way he talks a little too fast and how he’s got a tendency to have nervous tics and how he’s, yes, a control freak- because he needs control over _some_ part of his life, damn it, when he doesn't have any over anything else.

He learns to manipulate magic and use it for his own gain. The tricks start being less about fun and more about impressing people and getting dates with pretty girls. He starts to boast. It’s a surefire method of making girls squeal and make other guys jealous because of them fawning over him. It gets to his head, and he never really does get over that high of girls - no, people in general - thinking more of him because he can make things appear and disappear, he can put things together and take them apart with the flick of a wrist, and it makes him feel more than mortal.

But his siblings  _aren’t_ impressed because he’s still their dorky kid brother trying to dazzle them with ‘stupid kid tricks’, and when Danny brings home what seems like the twentieth, thirtieth bright red F on a test, his parents sit him down and give him an hour-long lecture on how it’s time to sober up and stop messing around with ‘useless conjuring tricks’ and that it’s time to finally live up to the reputation of the other Atlases. 

He gives himself just a few minutes to cry, then drops out the moment he can, packs up, leaves home, determined to show his family that magic’s more than a little-kid thing. It’s _more_ than that. It’s art. It’s beautiful. It's his  _life,_ he realizes, more than making other people go _wow_ \- it's his  _life._

Thinking of being accepted into the ranks of the Eye takes his breath away. It’s all he ever wants. It’s the crème de la crème of the world of magic. It’s all he ever needs to prove to them that magic is _more than that._

He and Henley make a good team, for a while, and he gets where she’s coming from - family being a bag of dicks, wanting to break out and do her own thing. But she wants to make people hurt and scared where he wants them to be dazzled, and she wants to push people out of their comfort zones where he wants to draw them into his own with beauty and something _new,_ and it’s their difference that lets her understand. Allows for it to dawn on her, one day, that she’s just another stepping stone for him, in his journey to become part of the Eye. She resents it, resents that he’s using her even though he realizes it was inevitable on so many levels. And when Rebecca comes into the picture… that’s just about the last straw.

Danny doesn’t expect to see her again, but he _does._ He finds her - and _them_ - at that creepy little apartment. Jack unlocks the door, Henley tosses the rose into the vase, and suddenly she isn’t his assistant but his partner as they go on that crazy-ass journey robbing banks and taking money from right under Arthur Tressler’s nose and disappearing into the night after it’s all over.

He and Jack talk and they find similarities, having family and yet having none, feeling unwanted, needing something to stroke their ego because it’s been beaten down for so fucking long. Their hearts beat to the same rhythm even if their scores are a little different, unlike where he and Henley were playing different drumbeats to the same piece of music. They talk through the night and he falls asleep on Jack’s shoulder and the Jack falls asleep on his lap and -

He thought he was in love with Henley.

A kiss later, in the drunken haze that people get into at three in the morning after confessing all their secrets, he realizes he’s in love with the kid.

It ends exactly the way he wants it to, on the carousel, bright lights and beautifully painted horses and gilded poles and cheesy carnival music - and the knowledge that they’re in  _The Eye_. Merritt grins and slides an arm around Henley’s waist and she kisses him, and when Jack sees Danny’s face he laughs and kisses his boyfriend too.

It’s a blissful night. It’s _their_ night. He’s in the Eye with the love of his life and the best team he could ever ask for and suddenly, who gives a shit if his family’s impressed or not? 

Aiden, Reese, Ellesmere, Elspeth, his parents, rejection, disappointment - they are the past. The Eye, Henley, Merritt, Dylan, Jack, magic - this is his, now. This is his life. And he’s going to live this. 


	6. reeves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Escape Artist.

_henley_

\---

She has always been the outcast. 

For one, her parents actually plan for - and want - her siblings. And a fifteen-year-old boy and his thirteen-year-old sister, just beginning to delve into the complex world of being teenagers and what it entails, aren’t very interested in spending time with a little kid sister who can’t even speak or walk, and for them, only gets in their way when they're doing their thing.

Henley sees herself as a burden. It’s inevitable, as she grows up and begins to understand her parents’ constant griping about having to provide for one more. Her siblings are distant, never want to spend time with her, and chase her out of their rooms the moment she steps across the threshold. Childhood is a blank space of repetitive memories, sitting in her room playing with hand-me-downs, with everyone else in the house always too busy, with no time - not _wanting_ to make time - for her.

Felicity and Stephen are strikingly good-looking children. Henley is not, and even at a young age she can hear the whispers, and she can see how they're almost  _ashamed_ that their little sister doesn't get her looks complimented the way they do, and they try to ignore her when they can. It's like pretense that she isn't  _there._

Henley tries to pretend, too.  

She’s quiet, with a penchant for reading and writing a lot. Combined with her plain looks, it’s playground suicide for a kid wanting to be liked in everyday society amongst kids who don't know any better - playground suicide a kid wanting to be popular, or even to just be _accepted._ It’s a cliché but it ends up happening, sitting in the classroom during break and recess and just getting lost in imaginary worlds with imaginary people of her own creation.

She doesn’t talk to anybody. No one talks to her. She actually _likes_ it, after a while. Solitude has a comfort that can't be compared to anything else. Her own little bubble which doesn't get penetrated... except for when people decide to pick on her. 

It's inevitable, that Henley gets bullied. People take her books, her notepads, because they’ve learnt that’s what hits her hardest. The one time she finds her deskmate putting her newest short story in the trash bin, she acts on instinct - flares, punches the girl right in the jaw, lands her in the nurses' office and lands herself in detention.

Sitting in the locked classroom after school she does the only thing she knows how to do - makes the deskmate a villain in her story and gets the hero to put the same villain through unimaginable torture.

It’s _glorious._ She’s just a kid but she feels a rush of pure power, and deep down she feels like she wants to spend her life making people who hurt her… hurt.

Middle school means finding one or two friends who are - predictably - outcasts as well. She makes them partners to her hero when she writes her stories. Henley learns the meaning of _friendship_ \- but that doesn’t stop her from feeling like she isn’t wanted. People laugh at the girl with too-curly hair and specs, the girl who’s always found with pen in hand scribbling down some idea for a story in her trusty notebook.

She learns to tune it out because really, what else could she do?

High school comes around and she grows a little taller, slims down a little, ditches the glasses and puts in contacts, rebonds her hair a bit, and suddenly people find her _attractive._ It’s a strange feeling, people wanting to talk to her now, and it makes her angry. She doesn’t want to be defined by what she looks like. She wants to be defined by who she _is._ She’s still the outcast, she realizes, because everyone wants to know the body and nobody wants to know who she really _is_ on the inside. 

The world is a dark, twisted place.

So Henley works with that, becomes darker, more twisted, too.

She self-harms, a lot. She smokes and puts out cigarette butts on her skin. She cuts with old razor blades she digs out from the trash, and throws them back in after, their edges stained with crimson blood. She slices her flesh open with whatever she can use - fruit knives, art scissors, sewing needles. Her hands suffer the biggest brunt of the blow, because Henley discovers she has a fetish for carving at her fingerprints and her palm, trying to score away her identity and what marks her as undeniably her. It’s fascinating, seeing the beads of vermilion in stark contrast to pale skin, dripping down her fingers. It’s a different kind of magic, as compared to the magic she is in bed, according to her sexual partners. It’s a magic she takes solace in. She falls in love with the pain, the blood. It’s good, in a sick kind of way. 

She discovers that she’s good at the-other-kind-of-magic a little later, by pure chance. It’s the spring cleaning of her room and rediscovering a stack of books on magic tricks in the crawl space. Spring cleaning forgotten she sits amongst the half-filled trash bags containing things she’s planning to throw out and pores over the books, books she never remembered reading. She does the tricks - and she’s got a natural flair. It’s her destiny. It’s what she _wants_ to do, and to hell with Stephen and Felicity and her parents.

She becomes assistant to J. Daniel Atlas after she watches one of his tricks on the street and asks if he needs someone to help out. He does. 

At first she thinks he's pretty cool, if strange - but then again, so is she. And then she realizes he isn't everything she's looking for, because  _she's_ never been everything  _he's_ looking for, and also, Danny's a fucking  _dick._

Bastard, she growls to herself when she’s packing up on her last day and getting ready to leave. Stupid trapdoor. She can’t believe he’s making a fuss about the damn trapdoor and _Rebecca_ when it’s _Henley_ he’s fucking at night.

She fucking hates everyone. She can't imagine working under someone else  _again._

In that moment she knows - she just  _knows_ she's got to go solo. She loves magic and she loves being the centre of attention- she loves the thrill, the spotlight, the applause. And she knows exactly how to keep it coming.

It gives her a kind of gleeful pleasure when she does her star act. She loves to see the panic on her audience’s faces when she starts banging on the glass, pretending that the trick’s gone wrong. It’s hilarious to see people try to break the glass with all kinds of different methods - chairs, fists, tables, and more - and try to stop the piranhas falling into the tank. When the fish flood the tank and the water runs red, sloshing over the sides and splashing onto audience members, the cacophony of screams is music to Henley’s ears. They’re so _terrified,_ and it makes her feel so powerful, being able to scare them shitless. Appearing in their midst dripping wet and yelling about sadists is awesome, too.

Now she doesn't just have _herself_ to cause pain to. She has others, and it feels so good. 

She responds to the card because it intrigues her. Someone likes her magic. Someone is _impressed_ by her magic. 

She isn’t too impressed, though, when she sees Danny again. Who the hell does he think he is, honestly, telling her what to do _again_? _Not_ his assistant anymore.  _Hasn't he grown up, at least a little?_

Jack’s a nice kid, though. And Henley takes a liking to Merritt, his wit and his smile. And somehow they all make a good group, even with Danny being a dickhead, melding together perfectly - control freak, girl with the gloves, mind-reader, conman. They're more than a bunch of outcasts put together. They are a  _team._  

And _finally,_ people like her because of what she can do, not what she looks like. _Finally,_ she’s part of a group of people who have talent and do great things with it _._ With people who appreciate her, respect her, like her. Even Danny, because after some time it looks like he’s beginning to gain some maturity. Henley has got Jack to thank for that, she guesses, because it’s just like Danny to need a boyfriend to finally grow the fuck up.   

She waits for her family to text or call or _whatever_ after they're released from police custody, because surely, they must have seen that the kid they all didn’t want in the house fucking _made_ _it_ \- they _must_ have seen what the Horsemen did because _fuck,_ everybody is talking about it, all four corners of the world. Danny grins at her and reassures her by saying that if they’re in their right minds, they’d be barraging her with calls pretty soon to get a cut of the fame, and Jack nods, agreeing wholeheartedly. She’s made it to greater heights than any of them back home did. They’ve _got_ to contact her, somehow, because god, the satisfaction she'll get when they realize how wrong they've been and they voice it out to her.

And... they don’t.

Merritt sits with her when she shakes with sobs after throwing her cellphone at the wall, the pieces scattered at the foot of her bed. He places her gloves on her blanket and hugs her tight, whispers soothingly into her ear as his fingers trace the scars she’s learned to hide behind a flashy exterior - and she swears he’s healing her, not the scars on her skin but the scars on her heart. He’s there when they never were and it just settles in, so right, at that moment - that it doesn’t matter, has never mattered, will _never_ matter that the Reeves don’t care.

Because _he_ does. Because _they -_ because Danny and Jack and Merritt and maybe their invisible benefactor in the shadows - do.

Henley forgets about the broken mobile, deletes her family’s numbers and concentrates on the Horsemen, concentrates on her life _now._ Concentrates on sparring verbally with a far-more-mature-than-before Danny and laughing with Jack and being hopelessly in love with Merritt - she feels _wanted,_ loved, for the first time in her life.

Standing with Merritt and Danny and watching their final act play across screen upon screen in the heart of the city… it makes Henley feel something she’s never felt before. And then they have _their_ night on the carousel in Central Park, they meet Dylan and it all wraps up so cleanly, so perfectly. The wind whistles by her ear and she can’t stop smiling - and she’s _not_ an outcast anymore.  

They are more than a team, they are more than four new recruits of the Eye, they are more than the Four Horsemen. They are a _family._ And she knows in that moment she’s found the people she wants to spend her life with, in more ways than one. 


	7. mckinney

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mentalist.

_merritt_

_\---_

Every child is born naïve and innocent - and as most people believe, _good._

Merritt is born naïve, innocent and good.

Although they’ll never admit it, his parents breathe a sigh of relief when their younger son grows up clumsy and childish just like most children do. Because there’s just  _something_ about Marsden McKinney - Merritt’s older brother - that disturbs the McKinney couple. They love their elder son - but the boy seems too ruthless, too cunning for his age. The customary sibling rivalry seems too violent, too malicious on Marsden’s end, and a few muttered comments here and a narrowing of eyes there… call them superstitious, but when they looks at their son, they feel an indescribable sense of  _darkness._ And it does nothing but scare them. They’re terrified that their younger child will turn out that way too, and for better or for worse Merritt turns out ‘normal’, in that sense. They watch and try to intervene when Merritt seems confused, almost  _scared_ by Marsden’s more-than-occasional bouts of spite towards his younger brother.

“We can’t protect him forever.” Their mother frets at night, and their father shrugs helplessly because they’ve tried psychiatrists and doctors and priests and nothing really seems to work - their son still has an unexplainable trace of what they can only describe as _black_ in him. It’s not rational, it’s not logical, it just is.

But by some stroke of luck they end up not having to worry because somehow, even with the siblings coming to blows and fighting over every tiny thing and more, they end up close. They trade secrets, grow up a little, play games together, talk about girls when they’re in school. They’re classic best friends, and Marsden seems to mellow, even though there’s still the once-in-a-while flash of rage or malevolence that’s just out of place for a child of twelve.

They share a room and a bunk bed. Marsden plays logic games like sudoku all through the night while his little brother reads books on fantasy worlds. They hide under the covers and pretend they’re asleep when their parents come in to check on them. They talk.

Merritt says he wants to be a fortune-teller when he grows up. Marsden listens in amusement from the bottom bunk and stares up at wooden slats while Merritt romanticises the life of a fortune-teller scrying with a crystal ball in a gaudy circus tent, looming over people’s palms and tarot cards and spouting cryptic lines about their life to come, and tells his brother matter-of-factly that if he’s going to sit in the stuffy little tent conning people out of money all day, he’ll run the circus.

Merritt doesn’t really get it, but he chirps a happy “okay!” and they make a deal, a child’s deal for the future where Merritt’ll be the star and Marsden will run the show.

They grow up. Marsden discovers something called being a _manager_ which gives control over somebody’s career and whether they rise or fall, and it thrills him and draws him in immediately. Merritt discovers mentalism and is intrigued - mind-reading, telepathy, almost, and it’s natural that it goes on to hypnosis. Still young, still rather guileless on many levels, and he gains proficiency in ‘cool stuff’ like that with impressing people as the main goal. Impress people it does - and it starts drawing attention to him as he gets better and better.

There’s the thrill of satisfaction when he hypnotizes his first audience member, and he’s happy - a pure happiness of a job well done in a field he loves. It starts to become less of doing it because he wants people to like him, like it, and more of because it’s just so _fun,_ and it makes him smile. He meets people who appreciate his skill, and as their friendship progresses, appreciate him as a person, too. He makes friends, real friends, amongst the little fanbase he garners.

Marsden watches his brother get popular, skulks in the shadows, and makes his own plans. 

Merritt shoots to fame. It’s something everyone expects, and there’s nothing but congratulations when the McKinney name becomes a household one. Suddenly everyone knows the hypnotist/mentalist who can make people do his bidding even over the _phone_. Marsden becomes his manager, and that’s something everyone expects too. They work as a good team, and the older man sits down with his brother night after night to plan how to rake in money and work the business lucratively while letting Merritt apply his talent in the way he wants to.

Things keep getting better and better. Fame. Success. Wealth. Family. Friendship. And with all that on his plate, love knocks on Merritt’s door. Scarlet Franchot is beautiful and funny and thinks mentalism is genuinely interesting and not just a party trick. Merritt’s married by the age of twenty-nine. Marsden is his best man - and later godfather to Peyton McKinney, a little girl who has Merritt’s eyes and is the light of his life. Life is everything he wants at a young age, and Merritt couldn’t ask for more.

Then it all goes downhill.

Scarlet decides she married the wrong McKinney - and the wrong McKinney proves his parents’ fears of being a bad apple deep down right. One day Merritt wakes up to official charges, wakes up to his house clean of possessions, wakes up to his brother having flown the coop to some country across the world with Scarlet and _Peyton_ in tow, wakes up to the discovery that Marsden’s been siphoning money from Merritt’s earnings from the very beginning.

Merritt has years behind the cold, unforgiving bars of a jail cell to wonder how he could be so blind.

Gaol hardens any man, guilty or innocent. Merritt’s eyes turn from warm tenderness to frigid Arctic ice, and his heart goes through the same transformation.

The only thing he genuinely regrets, he realizes on his first day a free man again, is Peyton. He doesn’t know, doesn’t care what his ex-wife sees in his brother, doesn’t care what Marsden’s going to do with his hard-earned money - but god help the louse if he hurts Merritt’s daughter in any way. It’s the sole reason why Merritt tracks them down first thing.

He sees them in Tasmania, once. Watches them in their luxury mansion from afar. Peyton has two half-siblings, a younger brother and sister. Marsden actually seems _happy -_ and god, so does Scarlet. Merritt’s heart clenches when he sees they’re one big happy family. It dawns on him, how his first proper love, his _daughter,_  might just be that _light_ that's gotten rid of his brother’s ‘darkness’, that ‘darkness’ his parents talked to him about through the glass panels in prison. Merritt watches Marsden smile, real smiles without a hint of malice, all the way from the hillside, watches him play with Peyton and two kids who share some blood with their older half-sister. Peyton calls Marsden _dad_  and if she doesn’t say that Merritt would probably watch them for a good part of the day.

But it spills out of her lips effortlessly and Merritt turns, leaves in his car, and doesn’t come back. It’s better for all of them.

It’s hard, struggling from rock bottom and trying to make a comeback - make a _living._ That bastard cheating on his wife with her sister inflames Merritt, and he cons everyone but he makes a point to be extra vicious on the asshole in the café because he can’t help but see history repeat itself, in a way, in front of him in the guise of the dickhead and his wife and _Janet._  

The tarot card almost stings. _Hermit._ He spent his childhood messing with fortune-telling crap like that and he knows what it signifies. It stings. 

He responds to the invitation anyway.

Merritt actually likes Daniel from the moment he sets eyes on the boy, but the years following his last day in prison have hardened his protective shell - the one which makes him snarky and derisive, the one that makes him flip the birdie at Daniel within minutes when they first meet.

Henley just bowls him over even though he tries not to show it, because that shock of red hair reminds him _so much_ of Scarlet but her smile, it hits him deep inside, somewhere even Scarlet never even brushed past, ever.

When he says she’s beautiful, he means it.

They are a really good team, Merritt has to admit. He’s not used to working in a team after all that time of finding people to commit daylight robbery on alone, and it makes him uncomfortable, just the slightest, working under someone’s commands because _shit,_ look what happened the fucking last time he did that. But he knows he’s promised himself not to let Marsden and Scarlet take away his ability to trust. So trust he does, and he’s glad when everything works out to a tee. They are  _so good._ It is so hard, sometimes, evading the law knowing the consequences of breaking it - but it is  _so good._

And the rush of yelling “we are the Four Horsemen and goodnight!” on that stage with money raining over the auditorium… it is so worth it.

He finds Henley in her room with tear-streaked face and fragments of what used to be a cellphone on the floor tiles. He embraces her, rests his chin on the top of her head and feels her shake in his hug. He murmurs so many renditions of “it’s going to be okay” to her, traces the map of lesions on her palms and digits and wrists that she hides with her gloves. His fingers tangle in her hair when she clings to him for comfort and safety, and he holds her till she stops crying.

He falls so hard for her.

Merritt’s by her side till the end, as they dash out of their safe house leaving Jack to clear the evidence, as they watch the news report of the car crash, as they meet Jack at Central Park in the middle of the night, as they search the place for the Lionel Shrike tree, as they meet Dylan on the carousel. He kisses her, and she laughs, the sound snatched by the wind to rustle the leaves of the trees.

The mentalist realizes he is _happy._ A happiness he has not felt since the day of his daughter’s birth - and yet a different happiness, too.

It’s all he ever wants, for real, so many years after the time he thought it had come to him. Dylan, Henley, Jack, Danny, hell, even Alma Dray if Dylan’s really got a crush on her. This time it’s going to work. Merritt feels it in his bones and he just wants to cruise along on the ride, let it take him where it wants to. He’s got them all by his side, French girl, benefactor, kid, arrogant prick of a pseudo-leader, the love of his life. From now, it can only get better.


	8. wilder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sleight.

_jack_

_\---_

A week after the Horsemen have their night at Central Park, Dylan gets them around to his place for a little chat. He jokes about how he’s actually spruced the pigsty up for the sake of his image, and the five of them - Horsemen and Alma - discover that he’s a superb chef. They sit around his coffee table and watch _Freaks,_ Alma lounging with her head in Dylan’s lap and Henley curled up in Merritt’s embrace and Jack and Danny sitting comfortably close to each other. It feels almost familial, and Jack loves it.

The conversation drifts from magic to the Eye to how they met to their childhoods, and Jack stiffens against Danny’s slender frame when the others start talking about their parents and siblings and their life as kids. It’s not lost on Danny when his boyfriend turns a little pale, and he holds him closer, whispers in his ear. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Jack mumbles, but he can’t help but feel a twinge of discomfort as Henley begins to talk about her parents, her sister and brother. It’s a reflex, because…

“Your siblings dickheads too? Seems like a trend,” Merritt smiles warmly at Jack when there’s a break in Henley’s story, seeing his discomfort and mistaking its cause. Jack shakes his head, turns away, and the atmosphere suddenly becomes heavier as his answer returns, trembling and shaky. “No…”

There’s more to that ‘no’ than it seems, and Danny pounces on it. “You didn’t have any siblings? You’re an only child?”

The boy exhales. “I had a lot of siblings… if you could call them siblings.”

There’s a pregnant silence, a mélange of muddled confusion and bewilderment, before the ball drops, at least for Alma, who grasps his meaning with her quick mind. “I get it… _Merde._ You grew up in an orphanage, didn't you?"

There’s an audible gasp that travels around the room, and Danny looks horrified at his previous statement. “Jack… I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”

“Nah,” Jack tries to shrug it off even as the familiar prick of tears begins to sting his eyes. The memory burns every single time he remembers it. Every single time. 

No child should have to watch their mother’s mental stability degenerate and see her not get any treatment for it, because their father was in denial. His first few years were happy, bright, _normal,_ when his parents were a blissful loving couple, with an older sister who was surprisingly fond of her younger brother. Jack doesn’t know _why_ his father kept staidly refusing to face facts, why his untroubled childhood turned into hell the day his parents were having a fight and his mother picked up a paperweight and smashed her husband’s head in.

Jack remembers far, far too clearly sitting on the top step, frozen, young mind unable to comprehend the sight before him. Remembers his sister running into the scene and trying to restrain her mother before she outright murdered their father, and losing her life on that day, too. Remembers being shuttled to a orphanage with nothing in sight but a bleak future and bloodstained memories.

Kids instinctively stick together in times of fear and pain. There are faces in Jack’s memory, vague and fuzzy when he consciously tries to remember them - but when he closes his eyes at night, exhausted and drained, they resurface on the insides of his eyelids, clear as day. Children’s faces, all sporting the same haunted countenance typical of kids who are forced to grow up too fast. 

 _Names._ He can still match the faces to the names - Lilian Alcott, the youngest of all of them there, _so young, too young,_ too young to have been beaten night after night for not obeying instructions she couldn’t have been expected to understand; Nadya Saltonstall, with the deepest green eyes Jack’s ever seen, the eyes he watched dull as she wasted away day by day; Ameryn Redfield, Jack’s first friend who died from food poisoning (if you could even call the slop they served food); Sapphire Callaway, who had an entire plan plotted out on how to run away and make a life on her own and died from her injuries when the ‘man of the house’ threw her against a wall after she talked back to him; Beau Van Wyson, Jack’s first crush and the boy he was going to run away from the home with. Pain-filled eyes and sad smiles that squeeze Jack’s heart and make him feel like he’s going to break apart, even after all this time.

 _Betrayal._ It’s the one reason Jack doesn’t run away from burning all the evidence on the day they’re on the run from the police, even though he could. Henley, Merritt and Danny - they’re like family. His other family, other than the now-dead Wilders and the kids back at the home. He’s already betrayed two families - not begging his father to face reality and get help for his mother because he was _scared_ … and running away from the home. It’s a memory that threatens to swallow him whole every time he remembers it (which is every night, in nightmares which leave him whimpering in a cold sweat with Danny hugging him tight and trying to soothe him).

Every single nightmare is a replay of that night - Jack recalls with uncanny clarity the smell of freshly cut grass and the feel of the night breeze on his skin as he and Beau made a mad dash to the barbed-wire fence with rough wool blankets to throw over the wire and gain safe passage across. The taste of freedom already on their tongues as they tripped countless alarms and scaled the wooden fence with surprising agility, the plan going exactly as they worked it out to be.

And then everything going wrong.

Beau’s screams still ring in his ears when Jack’s immersed in pure darkness, when he passes imposing enclosures and sees barbed wire. How Jack leaped down from the top of the fence with blanket still in hand, landing nimbly on his feet - and somehow knocking Beau off balance. It’s all slow-motion, the flaxen-haired boy toppling off-centre onto the unforgiving concrete and the sickening sound of bones breaking, Beau’s anguished shrieks of pain. Himself staring down at the blood beginning to pool around the teenager at his feet, Beau begging for Jack for help because it hurts so much.

And Jack turning, without a word, and dashing off into the night as the guards began to close in on them, with Beau’s cries still echoing behind him.

He spends the next one, three, five, ten years of his life running away. He picks pockets, sneaks into cars and stores after-hours while using the money he steals from cash registers to apprentice himself to a down-and-out magician - a has-been, someone who fell from grace after she was very publicly outed in a time and place that condemned her love for her girlfriend - going from robbery to becoming a small-time conman by performing magic tricks, singling out the smart-alecks and taking revenge on them by snatching their wallets, their billfolds, their valuables, spends his time cultivating his very real love for magic.

Jack spends that time thinking of all the kids - all the friends, _sisters and brothers_ \- he left behind at the home, too.

Ten years to the day he successfully escaped he stands outside the home and knows he could take the people who made half his childhood a living hell into court. He has that power, now. He’s made it, and other kids who’re still suffering in there can make it. It’s revenge, too, for the kids who are probably out on the streets now because they’re older than eighteen - Lilian, Nadya, Beau, if he’s still alive - for the kids who died in there.

He stands there for what feels like an eternity, and then turns away, because he’s a coward. He betrays them all, betrays them even when he remembers the promise he made the night he and Beau got ready to run.

_We will come back. We will get you all out._

_We promise._

That promise - it’s all that runs through Jack’s mind when he’s burning the papers. That he’d _never_ be able to live with himself if he betrays yet _another_ group of people who care about him, if he sees them sent to prison because he ducked out like a coward, _again._

Living on the streets for years, hiding his real situation from his mentor, it hardens him the way prison hardened Merritt, he learns when he talks to the older man. Jack joins the Horsemen wary, on his toes, even though he doesn’t show it. 

Just because he doesn’t want to betray anyone, not anymore, doesn’t mean he doesn’t let down his guard because he doesn’t want to be betrayed, either. 

But a year passes and somehow it’s so easy to slip into the routine, practicing, practicing, practicing for their big reveal - and coming home to Henley’s loud laugh and Merritt’s cutting wit and Danny’s confessions to him every single night once they get so much closer than Jack ever thought they would. It feels so good. He feels like he really belongs, like they really care.

And they do. It’s such a revelation. _They care._

Jack finishes spilling out his story in Dylan’s little apartment, finishes his third bottle of beer. It’s quiet for a moment before Danny slides an arm around Jack’s shoulders and kisses him. “You’ve quite a story.”

“We’ve all got stories,” Dylan smiles and pours another shot of scotch into his glass. “But… you’ve all come so far. We all have. The more important stories are the ones you're still writing.” He gives Jack a small smile, and Jack smiles back, thankful for the comfort and warmth. “Toast, everyone. A toast to how far we’ve come and how far we’re going to go.”

They fill their glasses, raise them as one. There’s a chorus of dedications - “to the future” “in memory of the kids” “for all of us to last long in our relationships”- all mixed together in one blissful symphony and they all smile.

Past grudges have been resolved, people forgiven, memories are being let go of. 

A new chapter’s beginning. 

\---

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the last chapter. It's been really fun dissecting the characters and creating their histories. I love this movie. What a masterpiece.


End file.
